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Wednesday, December 11, 2002
Editorial: Killing an ailing hospital
The plan to close the Cebu City Hospital, also known as the Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC), is not new. In the course of its 41-year history, there have been instances when mayors thought of shutting it down, mostly out of exasperation over its management, at times because of differences with its managers.
The strongest argument for its continued operation has always been concern for the poor. Where will the poor go without the city hospital?
Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña has cited a number of alternatives, including Philhealth insurance for the urban poor or sending patients to private hospitals and the government-run Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC).
The other options may look plausible but look again. Private hospitals are never within the reach of the truly poor. Private hospitals exist to make money, not to dispense charity. To be fair to these hospitals, they have to make a profit to survive.
As to Philhealth, we don’t know if its coverage has ever sufficed even for its regular clients. Often, the amount it gives is a fraction of the bill the patient pays.
A subsidy from the City Government can buy some service in private hospitals or VSMMC, but how much and for how many?
Picking the beneficiaries can also be nightmarish. Whom to rely for information? If the mayor refers to the way the health cards distributed by two Cebu City congressmen, he is in for a politics-laden system in which the inevitable criterion is the beneficiary’s support in the elections.
We are not shooting down the plan that, as we said, is not original. We urge, however, a serious and careful study, in which the options are rigidly screened. We suggest a study by experts who know what the hospital was founded for and how it must be run. We propose that councilors take part in deciding, not just a unilateral move by one leader.
There must be strong bases for closing the hospital, surely not as knee-jerk response to criticism on the assignment of three CCMC nurses to attend to a city councilor in a private hospital.
Apparently, the mayor was pissed off by the remark of a CCMC doctor who leaked the pullout of the nurses for Councilor Gabriel Leyson, who had sprained an ankle when he fell off a jetty into the seawater while partying in Bohol.
The CCMC closure is still a plan. The mayor can still change his mind, if the study will persuade him that keeping the hospital open is still the better option and what the hospital really needs is, maybe, just better management.
The hospital is ailing. It has been for years now. Killing it may not be the way out yet.
Tomas’ Plan B
People may note that what has moved Mayor Tomas Osmeña to consider and others to root for the city hospital’s shutdown is not its failure to make money. The Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC) has never been meant to earn profits.
It is inefficiency, or perceived efficiency.
It is corruption, or perceived corruption.
To be sure, it is not a perception formed in one year and a half but in several years in its 41-year history.
Mayor Osmeña has imposed on himself an enormous task in personally tackling CCMC’s problem of management.
To a mayor who sometimes behaves as if he were Superman, that must not be daunting.
Anyway, he has already provided himself with Plan B in case he fails: Terminate.
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